Hiring an Unpaid Intern for the Summer? Five Legal Guidelines to Avoid a FLSA Violation

With summer vacation around the corner, many companies are looking to hire unpaid interns. If your company is considering an unpaid internship, be sure to carefully structure the internship to avoid running afoul of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). A few general principles may be gleaned from recent court decisions in which courts have addressed whether an unpaid internship violates the FLSA. Generally, an unpaid internship is considered compliant with the FLSA if it is structured such that it offers more of an educational benefit to the intern than it does a utilitarian benefit to the company. Further, as a practical matter, unpaid internships that offer school credit are generally considered compliant with the FLSA. To reduce potential liability, employers should consider the following five guidelines for unpaid internships:

1. Teach Skills that Are Fungible Within the Industry

Courts have acknowledged that classroom training is not a prerequisite for an unpaid internship; however, internships must provide something beyond on-the-job training that employees receive. Internships that only provide exposure to menial tasks, such as photocopying or making coffee, are not likely to meet this standard.

To the contrary, if the internship is engineered to be more educational than a paid position, it will likely be considered comparable to vocational school. For example, providing training similar to that which would be given in school and is related to an intern’s course of study.

Interestingly, one court has held that whether an intern actually learned anything is not dispositive of whether training or useful knowledge was offered by the company, reasoning that even a classic educational environment sometimes results in surprisingly little learning.

2. Ensure the Internship Experience Is for the Benefit of the Intern

Undoubtedly, interns receive benefits from their internships, such as resume listings, job references, and an understanding of how a particular office works. The latter benefits, however, are incidental to working in an office like any other employee and are not the result of internships intentionally structured to benefit the intern.

Courts have held that resume listings and job references result from any work relationship, paid or unpaid, and are not the academic or vocational training benefits envisioned by the law. Unpaid internships that benefit the intern often involve the receipt of academic credit for their work and/or satisfy a precondition of graduation.

3. Do Not Have Interns Perform Routine Tasks that Would Otherwise Be Performed by Regular Employees

Companies should closely supervise interns and not allow them to displace the work of regular, paid employees. Specifically, interns should not perform routine tasks that would otherwise be performed by regular employees.

Examples of tasks that courts conclude displace the work of regular employees include:

chores, such as taking out trash, taking lunch orders, answering phones, and making deliveries.

4. Supervise and Train Interns

A company may demonstrate that they received no immediate advantage from an intern’s work by showing that they were impeded by efforts to help train and supervise the intern. In other words, the company had to take time away from productive activities to supervise and train an intern. The latter-referenced training does not include training for menial tasks.

Further, courts give no weight to the argument that, by virtue of being a novice, an intern impedes work involving menial tasks. To negate this argument, courts cite the FLSA provision authorizing the Secretary of Labor to issue certificates allowing “learners” and “apprentices” to be paid less than minimum wage.

Thus, an employee is entitled to compensation for the hours he or she actually worked, whether or not someone else could have performed the duties better or in less time.

5. Set Parameters at the Outset of the Internship

Although the FLSA does not allow employees to waive their entitlement to wages, a company should have an agreement in place that the intern understands there is no entitlement to wages. Further, there should be a clear understanding with the intern that there is no entitlement to a job at the end of the internship.

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DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.

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